If you’re leading a business or organization and want to separate marketing myth from practical strategy, this conversation will give you the clarity—and courage—to build real momentum for growth.

We sit down with returning guest Darlene Ziebell—an accomplished entrepreneur, business consultant, strategy specialist, and multi-book author—to unpack the real story behind successful marketing for small businesses.

As business owners face rising costs, dwindling customer bases, and mounting challenges, the temptation to lean on marketing as a quick fix has never been stronger. But is throwing money at the latest digital tools or platforms really the answer?

Darlene Ziebell draws on more than 30 years of experience, from founding her own seven and eight-figure companies to consulting for both startups and Fortune 1000 giants, to reveal why most companies struggle—not from lack of effort, but from missing strategic alignment.

In this episode, you’ll hear why marketing works best as an integrated ecosystem, not just a checklist of trending tactics; how vanity metrics can lead you astray; and the critical difference between having a real business strategy and chasing every shiny new marketing object.

Darlene Ziebell also shares lessons from her own clients, explains the pitfalls of the “post and hope” approach, and outlines the foundational questions every owner must answer before investing in marketing.

If you like this episode, please let us know. We appreciate the feed back, and your support of offset costs of producing the podcast!

Key Takeaways:

• Strategy First: Marketing tools are just tools—not miracles. Without a foundational business strategy, even the best marketing is just expensive noise. (15:19)
• Measure What Matters: Forget likes and hits—focus on leads, conversions, customer acquisition costs, and revenue. Everything else is just noise. (12:00)
• Narrow Your Niche: Don’t fear choosing your target market. Trying to sell everything to everyone guarantees failure. It’s leaders who define their lane and stick to it that win. (16:12)

Moments

04:24 Entrepreneurship and business consulting experience

07:45 Using tools to drive impact

11:03 Starting in podcast consultancy

13:44 MBA insights for small business

17:39 Knowing your customer

21:37 Rebuilding marketing foundations

25:26 Smart money decisions early

29:01 Misinformation and fake social media stats

31:36 The importance of business strategy

33:26 Getting rejected early on

We would love to hear from you.

Give us your feedback, or suggest a topic, by leaving us a voice message.

Email us at hello@lookingforwardourway.com.

Find us on Bluesky and Facebook.

Please review our podcast on Google!

And of course, everything can be found on our website, Looking Forward Our Way.

Recorded in Studio C at 511 Studios. A production of Circle 270 Media® Podcast Consultants.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

Mentioned in this episode:

Listener Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the experts interviewed on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the podcast hosts or any affiliated organizations. The information provided in these interviews is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with qualified professionals for specific advice or information related to their individual circumstances. The podcast host and producers do not endorse or guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information provided by the experts interviewed. Listener discretion is advised.

We are looking forward our way. Hi, this is Brett. Business owners are feeling the squeeze of higher costs, fewer customers, and challenges that are driving them to the edge. Marketing, whether it's print media, social, digital, or just word of mouth, is often viewed as the saving step a company can take to survive and grow. Today we're going to test that myth. Our expert guest, Darlene Ziebell is an entrepreneur, business consultant and strategy specialist zooming in from Phoenix. Arizon. Welcome, Darlene, back to the podcast.

Hey, Darlene.

Hey. Thank you. Thank you, Carol, Brett, and all the listeners of Looking Forward Our Way. I'm so happy to be back. Thank you for inviting me.

You know, we've really enjoyed podcasting with you many times over the years and we're, you know, focusing normally on the development of small business supporting women owned businesses. You know, thank you so much. I feel like I'm always asking for favors with Darlene. Please come, please come back. The only thing is though, is that, you know, we're, we're taping this spring of 2026 and it's still cold here in Ohio. You haven't sent, you've sent a little bit of sunshine, but not the warmth of Arizona. And you guys are cooking down there.

Well, I won't tell you, it's 88 degrees.

Oh, my God. Yeah, I don't want to hear that. I think we're going to hit 70 this weekend. So anyway, so darling, before we get into our questions, I want to mention a couple of things to our audience. One, you volunteer for SCORE, which is a 50 year old nonprofit that collaborates with the Small Business Administration to guide business owners to success as a volunteering, as a subject matter expert on entrepreneurship. You're offering hundreds of workshops and webinars nationwide, presenting to thousands of business owners, which is a huge, huge program for you to be contributing to. And as you said, scores, as we said score is 50 years old. It's been, they've been doing this for a long time.

Also, you now have two books available on Amazon. A dozen Avalanches threaten small Business. Which one will bury you alive? I love that title and love the book and the Dangerous Myth of Easy Marketing, how it really works. And that's what we're going to discuss today. What I didn't know that you just told us is that you've got a third book that's going to be coming out called Going out on a Limb and it's going to be launched later in 2026. That book is going to pull back the curtain on entrepreneurship, showing why businesses really succeed or fail and what it actually takes to build something that lasts. So that book is truly going to show your career as an entrepreneur. So we're going to provide our audience with all the details on those different pieces that they can take a look at.

And also, I think SCORE workshops are really open. Is that correct? So people can go into the SCORE website and find you.

Yes, absolutely. They're all over the country. So if they go to score.org or go to my website, I have all the events that I do for SCORE also listed on my website. Right. They can great for any of them. And most of them are. Are free. So.

Wonderful. Wonderful. That's great information. Okay, so we got that done. We got our little commercial out there on all the work Arlene's been doing. Yeah. You and I have known each other literally for decades, and in all those years, we're young, but it wasn't decades. My trips to Chicago to see Darlene and Rick, you know, we've got to give another shout out to Rick Stoney's out there somewhere.

But over all those years, you've been teaching me the nuances and hard lessons of growing businesses. Before we get started on this newest endeavor, I want to give our audience an opportunity to hear some highlights of your background and what brought you through this career journey.

Well, thank you, Carol. Highlights. Well, it's over 30 years, both as an entrepreneur and a business consultant. I've worked with companies ranging from startups to the Fortune Thousand. I built four of my own businesses, three from the ground up, and I grew them into seven and eight figures, often in relatively short periods of time. I've also had successful exits, a merger, a sale, and an esap. You know, that experience puts me in a very small group of business owners who is not only a large enterprise management consultant, but also I actually built, scaled and exited companies at a high level. So I just didn't advise people from the sidelines.

I've actually been in the trenches. So today I work directly with business owners who are trying to grow, scale, or figure out why their businesses aren't performing the way it should. So what I see over and over is most business owners don't struggle because of lack of effort. They struggle because of something underneath isn't working. So hence the reason for this book. So I'm inviting me.

Oh, it. It really goes to show, though, when I was reading through this book, you know, the notion is that people need to do their homework. Every topic Brett and I talk about, it always gets down to do your homework and do your research and all. And if somebody doesn't realize that the consultant they're using has never owned a business.

Yeah, that is.

That is enlightening. So great. We are going to hear more from you then with our next questions.

Yeah.

So as Carol mentioned, we're going to focus on the myths of digital marketing today. This information is critical for anyone leading an organization, whether it's a business school or nonprofit. Your book is divided into three sections, Deconstructing the Myth, what really Works, and Applying Real World Marketing. Let's give an overview of why busting the myths of easy button marketing templates have become a passion for you.

Well, Brett, it's really interesting because I work with. I have a boutique consulting business now, and I work with a lot of business owners. And over the last few years, I met business owners spending, I kid you not, a million dollars per year on marketing with absolutely nothing to show for it. So I learned that more marketing doesn't fix a broken business. It just makes the problem more expensive. And by hiring more digital marketers who've never done it before without a strategic plan, business owners are spending their money faster with no results. So if you're a business owner with slower sales, you need a plan that can convert your marketing activity into actual paying customers.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. Because there's plenty of people that are going to. Well, plenty of digital business consultants that will raise their hand going, I'm the professional. I'm the professional. We get them all the time on LinkedIn every day. Oh, every day. And you could get on the right day at the right moment.

When you're feeling that pain the most, you could easily get swallowed in. Yeah, I'll talk to you, you know, and you can't. You got to hold back. You got to hold back. Yeah.

Well, one of the things that we're going to get to is that is looking at all of these tools as tools, not miracles. And, and that's just like when we talk about AI when I always go back when. When folks complain about AI, I'm like, I can remember my first desktop computer. And it's a tool, you know, and you have to keep that in mind. It doesn't work miracles. You're the one who's doing the work behind it. So when I was at Employment for Seniors, we were really getting into LinkedIn, Facebook, and some of the other platforms to drive customers to that nonprofit. It was a constant daily juggle to make it work and figure out how to evaluate numbers that were so confusing.

I can remember when we first launched a counter on our website and we had like, tens of thousands of hits, and I thought, this is the coolest thing ever until you find out that, you know, those hits don't necessarily mean anything. So you call marketing an ecosystem. It is not just a list of tasks or steps that seems to take marketing into a whole new realm of business strategy. Tell us more about that perspective of an ecosystem and why it can be successful.

So marketing has been around for hundreds of years. Think back to the original Sears catalog, and with digital marketing today and all the tools, people are confusing what actually is a marketing plan versus how do you use the tools? I call those guys tool jockeys, because marketing isn't just a checklist. And that's why I call it an ecosystem. Every part has to work together. You have a message, you have your offer, you have your pricing, you have your sales process. And the platforms you use all have to be aligned. Most business owners treat marketing like separate tasks. They post here, they run ads there, they send emails.

But when those pieces aren't connected, the results feel random and the data gets confusing. That's when in an ecosystem, everything supports the same goal. The right message attracts the right customer, the offer makes sense, and the platform simply delivers it. So when marketing starts to work consistently instead of feel like a constant juggle, that's when you're going to start seeing results.

I can remember when you and I were talking about this topic and pulling it together for a podcast, you had mentioned that you had just talked to a client who was at one of your workshops who had spent, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing. And when you looked at their. I don't remember if it was a website or something, and you looked at them and said, well, what are you selling? They were.

They didn't talk about. It was actually a television commercial. Yeah.

Oh, that's right. That's right. Yes. And you had no clue what they were trying to sell.

Yeah. There was no real call to action to get paid by. Yeah, I remember that.

I mean, I've actually had that comment made to me now. This has been a long time ago with. When I first started in podcast consultancy, they contacted me because they knew I could help them do something. But they also asked, so what do you do? You know, even somebody in marketing has the problem of like, okay, wait a minute, I know what I do, but I can't say it yet. I don't know how to say it. So, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. You know, the marketing ecosystem has to be Tied to the business strategy, but also measurable.

Is the evaluation of marketing the hardest to devise? I mean, after all, you are chasing numbers created in the Ethernet.

Well, it can feel like the hardest part, but it shouldn't be. The problem isn't that the numbers are digital or the tools they're using. The problem is most businesses are measuring the wrong things. When marketing is tied to strategy, the metrics become very simple. Leads, conversions, cost to acquire a customer, and revenue. I mean, that's all that matters. Everything else is just noise. Everything else is just activity.

If you don't have that original alignment, the data feels confusing because it doesn't connect to how the business actually makes money. When it does, the numbers tell a very clear different story, and then everyone's happy.

Okay, when you just listed those bits and pieces off, is that sort of a defined group of things that are always to be measured? Are those like defined pieces or is it.

Those are. Those are the only things that matter. But if they're not connected in alignment to what the company sells and why they're selling it or who they're selling it to, the data is just confusing. You don't understand what it's trying to tell you.

Like going back to the hits on a website, which, you know, correct.

So you can't. You can't just measure hits, you can't just measure likes, you can't just measure shares because you don't know the real reason behind them.

Right. So literally every MBA or every business school graduate should know those four or five pieces.

Well, most. Most. Because I have my MBA from Kellogg and I was in the executive program. You have to. Here's. Here's the difference between a small business owner and the large enterprise corporations. Like, I was a management consultant to the Fortune 1000. Those people already have a strategy.

They already have a foundation. Those large Fortune 1000 companies take that for granted when those people are going to get their mba. So the MBA programs are not broken down for the small business owner.

Right.

This is what makes my experience so unique because I've done both and I can see where the differences are. So in my MBA class, when a professor was announcing this and this and this with marketing, it was already presumed that this foundation was already laid and everyone in that company knew exactly what the goal is and where they were going. But the small business owner, that step was skipped in the MBA programs. So coming, no offense to all the great schools. I mean, I love my program that I went through and the MBA that I got. But you have to Understand, it's not designed for the small business owner.

An owner needs a really strong, concise business strategy to be successful. Assuming that plan even exists. What is then needed to create that marketing strategy? Or are they the same thing? And why are the steps to creating that business strategy so often ignored by owners?

Well, because the marketing strategy is very different than a business strategy. They're not the same thing, and it's very confusing. And this is where most small business owners go wrong. And when I say small, I'm saying there's 34 million companies in the United States with less than 500 employees. Those are considered small. So what is a business strategy? It answers one question. How does the business win and make money? It defines the market. It defines how they position.

It defines their competitive advantage. How are they different than all their competitors? Then? Marketing strategies come after that. Simply how you communicate. Marketing is simply how you communicate and sell what the strategy has already been defined. If the strategy is not clear, marketing turns into guesswork. And that's when owners start chasing the tactics and spending money without results. So for a marketing strategy, you need three things. You need a clear understanding of how the customer buys a defined competitive position.

How are you different from all the competitors? For example, I have 9.2 million competitors on LinkedIn who say they are business advisors. I mean, that's a lot of competition. And then you have to align your offer with the message. So why do they skip the strategy? Because it forces them. They have to make some hard decisions. They have to choose where to win and where they don't. It's a very uncomfortable position to be in. Business owners have to know where their lane is and stay in that lane, and they have to stick with it.

And then marketing becomes much easier. It's fast, it's visible, it gives. And, you know, if you're chasing everything and you're just marketing with all the tools, it just gives you the illusion of progress. But without a strategic plan or a roadmap, it just. It's just expensive noise. I just got off the call before. I'm doing your podcast with a gentleman who is launching a new business plan. He wants to expand a side gig he has, and he started listing every little thing he wanted to sell.

And I had to stop him. I said, you're, You're. You're just going to fail immediately. You're chasing everything. You don't have a strategy. You want to sell everything because you're afraid you're going to lose a customer. And that's the uncomfortable feeling. You have to know where to say, no, that's not my customer base, but this group is.

So then the assumption is an owner is afraid to define that niche because they're afraid to, they're going to miss something. But in actuality, if they can't define that niche, it may not exist. What they're trying to sell may not be sellable.

Exactly.

And that's, and that's the fear.

Okay, Exactly. Everyone thinks they have some great ideas because it's a hobby or it's something that you enjoy or something that you do. But when you try to just market it and you don't get any results, well, it could be a few things that are wrong. You could be marketing in the wrong tool because that's not where your customer base is. So if you can't identify who your ideal customer is, you're not selling. I mean the Fortune too. You know, Walmart, Fortune 1 knows they're selling to people who do not want to spend any more money for a product than what they charge. They're the, they're called the low cost provider.

And you go to Amazon, Fortune 2. I just had an Amazon delivery at 10 o' clock last night. I go there because I don't want to take the time to go to Walmart to buy it.

Right.

Saving thing. Right. So I pay a little bit more money and so that they know exactly where they fit. And a small business owner is so afraid to pick a lane because they're, they're afraid they're going to lose business or they're not going to grow. So they, they want the entire swimming

pool or, or their idea is no good.

Well, see, that's why they don't know if their idea is no good because they try and sell it to everyone.

Right, Right. Interesting.

Yeah, that's exactly why, it's why so many fail. I mean 80, 85 fail before year five. And that number hasn't changed since I've been forever and at least since I've been talking to you guys. It's been a while. Yeah.

Interesting. Your book mentions that a business owner is going to save money, time and energy and momentum by purposefully and thoroughly creating a business marketing strategy. First. Isn't it just easier to pick a tool or a platform like LinkedIn and

just go with is easier. And that's why so many businesses are doing it. But it doesn't mean it's effective or it's going to work or it's going to make money. I mean, this is the problem. I mean think about it. Picking a platform like LinkedIn without a strategy is like showing up to sell without knowing what you're selling, who you're selling it to, or why they should buy it. You might get activity, but you won't get consistent results. You just mentioned earlier, you guys get a lot of messages about selling digital marketing.

And why are they picking you? They don't know why they're picking you. They're just sending out a net over the ocean to see what they catch. But when you build a strategy first, every tool and platform has a purpose. You know who you're targeting, what message matters, and how it's going to drive the revenue. So I call it picking a social media site for marketing without a strategic foundation. I call that a post and hope strategy. It doesn't work. It just doesn't work.

I think I remember those days of post and hope exactly.

It's like, oh my gosh, somebody read it, somebody didn't.

Yeah. And you haven't even mentioned that daily change of algorithms on those platforms that,

you know, you know, it's getting worse with AI, so it's getting way more complicated. With AI, you really know who your target audience is. Yeah.

Oh, it, it's amazing. That's. I, I have to, I have to say, I'm really glad I'm not in that. In that fray anymore. It was, it was pretty wild, that's for sure. Okay, so your book provides a lot of examples of how owners have skirted around this strategy building step and then found that their marketing plan has no basis in fact or is flawed. One interesting example was viewing an owner as a leader instead of a hustler. Someone who knows their business and manages with strength.

Give us an example of an owner that you've guided toward that level of leadership instead of chasing all those fad marketing tools.

Well, it's interesting because unfortunately, every client I take on comes to me for increasing sales growth, and they presume it's going to happen through marketing. But with almost without exception, I spend the first part of our work unwinding what they've already tried. Different platforms, agencies, tools, campaigns, whatever it was. I find most of it was built on guesswork, the hope and that strategy. And unfortunately, it takes me almost two years to fully turn that around. Not because it's complicated, but because now we're rebuilding the foundation while the business is still running. I call that flying an airplane while it's still under construction. You got to keep it in the air, you got to keep it filled with fuel.

You can't crash land so how are you going to do all that? So it actually becomes a little bit more complicated than starting from scratch. So let me give you. I had one owner who spent money on all this digital visibility. They were chasing every new marketing trend. Social media, paid ads, email funnels. They were busy all the time, spending all this money, but no sales were. The sales weren't moving nobody. The customers weren't coming in.

So when we step back, the issue wasn't marketing, it was their positioning. They had not clearly defined why the customers should choose them in the first place. Their message was too generic. Their pricing didn't reflect the value to the customer group that they should have selected, and their offer looked like everyone else in the market. I mean, these ads did not target a defined customer. So we had to stop all the noise, shut it all down. And then we had to rebuild the business strategy. Who they served, what problem they solved, and how they win.

And that's only then did we go back to marketing. And that's what I call the shift from a hustler to a leader. Because if you're just hustling with the hope and pray and post strategy, you're not a leader. A leader actually builds a business first and then knows exactly how to win, how they're going to make money, and then they use marketing to support that. That's after the fact. It's not before. It's unfortunate, but most, most people don't, like I said, they don't want to make the hard decision of who they're not going to, going to sell to.

Do you find that the owners that are kind of in the worst spot have gone into that hole? Because it's not that they didn't do their homework, but they've gone into creating this business maybe on a whim or it was a hobby that they wanted to expand. Or is there some, something going on that leads people to dig that hole so deep they can't get out?

Well, they, they don't know when to cut their losses Short, number one. And I'm going to give you an example of Amazon. Jeff Bezos only sold books, right? I don't know if you guys remember that. When he started, I think he borrowed $10,000 and sold books out of his garage. He didn't go after the entire Sears catalog day one. This is another problem. And this is why people keep digging that hole. Because if the book didn't sell day one.

Okay, let's try this, let's try this, let's try this. They don't give it Enough time to test the market. If they would do that, then they would realize that they either are selling something that nobody wants to buy or which is actually 40% of the failures in this country are companies that are trying to sell something nobody wants to buy.

Okay.

Yeah, they knew that early on they wouldn't waste a whole lot of money. Like this call I just had, he was going through the list of where he's going to borrow money, 401k equity in his home, going. And I said, you know, oh, my. Oh, true, truly. And you're never going to get that money back if this, if this plan is wrong or. And he wanted to chase everything, he can only pick one or two and try it first before. And I keep telling him, the billionaires today and the trillionaires pinch every penny when they decide they're going to sell something else or add a new product or service. They want to know what that return is going to be.

Don't throw spaghetti on the wall and hope it sticks, right?

So when a marketing strategy has been well formed, the steps are clear to the owner. They know how to position your organization and, and engage the appropriate marketing tools. There's a level of insight and courage needed to pull that lever to do it. Now, what does that leader feel at that moment? I mean, how do they stay on course?

Well, they're feeling clarity. It makes it much. When I work with them, it makes it much easier for them to understand the goal. It's like getting in a car. You're in Columbus, Ohio, and you want to drive to Miami. They know exactly, exactly what the goal is. There's more clarity. They know exactly who they are, who they're serving, how they're going to win.

There's always some risk. There's definitely risk, but it's more informed risk. It's not guesswork. So the courage comes from finally picking and having direction. You know you want to get to Miami. You know you want to sell this. You know this is the group you're selling to. And when you stay in that course now it comes down to discipline, not chasing every new idea.

I call it chasing the shiny object syndrome. I blog about that all the time. It's not reacting to every dip. It's not letting all the outside noise pull them off. Your original strategy, now you're measuring results. Now you're making the adjustments when needed. And you don't abandon the plan. I mean, you tweak it and you work with it.

And that's really the big difference. I mean, they start reacting. They Stop reacting. And they're leading now. They're a leader.

Well, in actuality, if they are successfully creating a business plan and using their marketing strategy, well, they could do some expansions into those other areas at the appropriate time, and they'll probably have a better feel for which of those expansions they really want to do, as opposed to trying it all at once.

Exactly. Similar to the Amazon model started with books. When that became popular, they added CDs and tapes. When that became popular, you know, they added records. They only added one product line at a time. It's a beautiful model. And that's how small business owners should really start. Pick a narrow niche market, figure out who that client is, work with it, and then the marketing part is how you're going to connect with them.

Because I'm telling you, just spending more marketing is just creating more noise that's not going anywhere. And people are just, just losing more money faster using the technology and the tools that are available today.

Well, given how many people are on social media and as Brett said, how much is coming back at us literally by the second?

Yeah,

just having more marketing is not necessarily. Nobody's going to see it. And that should be the assumption.

And unfortunately, people have to realize you can't trust everything you see on social media. X. And some of the social sites are coming out posting statistics and, you know, 40% of, 40% of what you see are done by bots. So these aren't even real people. These are huge organizations that are trying to control the narrative of a product or service or a company. And you can just Google, how do I buy likes for my social media sites? And you can buy them, they're for sale. You could buy likes, comments, you could buy shares, you could buy all that. So when you see somebody with a LinkedIn profile with 100,000 followers, I always ask, well, did they purchase those or did they actually get them organically? Organically.

Are people really following them?

Yeah, that's the big thing. Like, do you really have 100,000 people really reading what you're putting out there?

Exactly. So you can't always trust the data you're reading. So you have to verify, verify, verify. Why? That's why it's so important to know what numbers to measure. And most digital marketing people are measuring the wrong numbers.

Yeah, interesting.

Which is why I ended up writing this book, because. And I'm actually launching another business called, you know, the Growth Authority. And it's, it's. I'm actually launching a marketing agency to take over every all the digital marketing. And the predecessor to taking over the digital marketing is that I have to do their strategic plan. Because once the strategic plan is done, then we'll know whether or not the digital marketing will work.

Right. Every time I talk to Darlene, I hear about another book, another business, another workshop series, and we're still trying to get you to come to Columbus.

I know. I'm here. I will. We'll have to do a live event. I know. Yes. Just.

Oh, that would be great.

A book signing if nothing else. You know, we'll just.

There you go. Yes.

Yes, that would be wonderful.

We'll put a podcast with it. We'll just do a book signing. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Great. I love it. I'll be there

in. In the. In the summer, not the winter, Right?

Yes.

Right.

Yes. We have to wait a couple of months. No. Okay.

Darlie, we've got through this really quickly. I'm guessing we've missed a lot of good points, and you have many, many words of wisdom for our audience today.

Well, you know, if you're still listening to this podcast and something isn't working in your business, please don't assume the answer is more marketing. I cannot tell you how many people follow me or call me and I'll say, what's the biggest problem in your business? I need marketing. I need marketing. And I will ask them, what's your strategy? And do you even know what a strategic plan is? And they'll say, no, I don't. Here's how you answer that. You have to take a step back and ask yourself a much harder question. And the question is, do you have a clear strategy? Or are you running a business where you're just staying busy because activity will drain your time, your money, your momentum. Clarity is what builds a business.

If you want real growth, you got to stop chasing the tools. Stop chasing all these shiny objects. Do not believe that every ad you read that says, hire me, and I will do this and this and this, and give you all these clicks and likes. That's not fixing the foundation of your business. So if you're. If you're still not sure where to start, and that's exactly where I come in. Let's have a conversation. Let's take a hard look at what you're actually.

What's going on in your business and figure out what needs to change. That's why I wrote the book. I recommend people read it, and believe me, you'll wish you did it sooner. So thank you, guys. Really appreciate it.

It's so good to see you.

Yeah, it's great because you're really one of the most organized podcast groups that I have ever been on. I've been on so many that I'm like, this. This is going nowhere. They had no foundation. They didn't know what they were doing. At least you have a, you have a goal, you have a target, you have a group. I think it's great.

And we have a lot of friends that we impinge. Our, our. At some point in time, Brett and I are going to get a lot of no's and stuff.

Oh, let's hope not. Gosh, then we. Then we know it's time to pull the plug.

Exactly. Exactly.

Group. I mean, you're. You want to be Ohio's premier podcast group. I mean, you keep people informed, and I think that's great.